With the recent passing on July 10, 2015 of
Phuong Thanh, a very handsome German-Vietnamese Eurasian actor of traditional Southern Vietnamese folk opera known as "cai luong", made me think of another legendary Eurasian French-Vietnamese actor,
Dung Thanh Lam. But let's not drift away from the topic of Phuong Thanh's recent passing just yet. Afterall, he was a tremendous talent in his own right. I've had the chance to meet him on one occasion when I was over in Paris a few years back. I met him through singer
Tuan Hung's mother, "cai luong" actress
Kieu Le Mai, who is also Eurasian of French and Vietnamese decent. I found him to be a very lovely man, as he was quite humble. And despite how he was of advanced age during the time of our meeting, I can still see very visible remaining traces of him once being a very handsome man. Now that I think about it, I do remember watching him on those "cai luong" video productions from
Thuy Nga Paris back when I was a kid. Phuong Thanh had starred in a series of those "cai luong" video productions during the 1980s and costarred with the likes of
Huu Phuoc,
Thanh Duoc,
Huong Lan,
Mong Tuyen, Phuong Mai,
Phuong Hong Ngoc and Kieu Le Mai. He sure was one very handsome devil. I guess a lot of folks don't know this about me, but I've been a huge fan of "cai luong" ever since I can remember. I guess that's an innate trait for Eurasians. Looking back at the history of performers of Southern Vietnamese folk opera, there have been quite a few of us Eurasians like Phuong Thanh, Kieu Le Mai, Phuong Hong Ngoc, who is a quarter French,
Bich Ngoc and of course, Dung Thanh Lam. Phuong Thanh will definitely be greatly missed.
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Phuong Thanh (1948-2015)
Eurasian Actor of Vietnamese Folk Opera Stage Known as "Cai Luong" |
As I mentioned earlier, the passing of "cai luong" actor Phuong Thanh made me think of Dung Thanh Lam. Besides having watched Dung Thanh Lam perform live in an all-star cast which included Huong Lan, Huu Phuoc, Thanh Duoc, Viet Hung, Phuong Mai and
Bang Chau in
Tam Long Cua Bien at the Anaheim Convention Center back in the 1988 and one other time later that same year in
Nua Doi Huong Phan at the Valley High School auditorium in Santa Ana, California, I had also gotten to know him on a personal level when I became an adult sometime in the early 1990s. Where shall I begin? Alright, I'll start with when I first started singing for the Vietnamese community back in 1993. One of my first bookings was an engagement at the Normandie Casino in Gardena, Southern California where I would befriend a Vietnamese celebrity by the name of Kim Qui. Believe it or not, but Kim Qui was actually one of the first Vietnamese celebrities I had become friends with when I first started out as a Vietnamese singer. If her name happens to ring a bell with a bit of uncertainty, just disregard any uncertainty because it is who you think it is. Yes, that Kim Qui! The one and only Kim Qui, Saigon's legendary, most celebrated performer of burlesque. Or shall I say, the famous striptease artist? She was actually one very cool lady. Anyway, she had been booked to perform on that same engagement with me at Normandie Casino. At that time, I guess she was trying to pursue a career as a singer. But on the night of the show, somehow her segment where she was supposed to sing a couple of songs got cut out altogether and was only able to perform her burlesque act. So to make a long story short, she and I had become friends during rehearsals for the show. One day she invited me over to her place for dinner. That's when I found out that her "husband", or the man in her life at the moment, was none other than Dung Thanh Lam. Upon meeting him for the first time, we instantly clicked. I guess there's something about Eurasian-to-Eurasian interaction. Like I said, we just clicked and talked to one another as if we had known each other our entire lives. After that engagement at the Normandie Casino, I would see Kim Qui every now and then. But we really didn't remain that close simply because we didn't have all that much in common to really sustain a close friendship. I did run into her one night at the Ritz Nightclub in Anaheim some months after the Normandie Casino show and while she and I were sipping on some cognac, she revealed that she and Dung Thanh Lam had broken up. I could tell she was really saddened. That made me feel bad for her.
I hadn't seen Dung Thanh Lam for years until the beginning of the year 2000. It was during Tet season. I had been booked on a show in Pomona, California at the Tet Festival for the Vietnamese community there in celebration of the Vietnamese New Year. Since Pomona has a rather small Vietnamese community in comparison to Little Saigon in Westminster, California, you could imagine how much smaller their Tet festival gathering would be in comparison to what we're used to seeing in Orange County year after year. I think that was actually the very first year that the Vietnamese community of Pomona held a Tet festival. Only three performers were scheduled to appear at that show. Can you guess who these three were? They were Dung Thanh Lam,
Dai Trang and myself,
Thien Phu. Blown up photos of all three of us were so exaggerated on the flyers that had been made to promote the festival, it looked as if it were an advertisement for some really major event. But in all reality, the total number of people who ended up attending the Tet Festival in Pomona that year only came to just slightly over 300. I didn't realize it until Dung Thanh Lam had pointed this out to Dai Trang and myself when all three of us were hanging out in the dressing room before the show began. Pointing at the poster he said, "It's rather odd how they would book all three of us Eurasians for this show, don't you think? The flyer says that these three singers will be performing for the Vietnamese New Year's festival. What if someone who wasn't Vietnamese saw the flyer? Seeing photos of the three of us, they would probably think, 'Why are these three Mexicans performing for Vietnamese New Year?'" We couldn't stop laughing the whole night over what he had said.
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Dung Thanh Lam (1942-2014)
French-Vietnamese Eurasian Actor of "Cai Luong" Stage and Films in South Vietnam |
Unfortunately, that was the only time I ever got to work with Dung Thanh Lam. Two years after that one time we had worked together, I would hear through the grapevines from others in the Vietnamese entertainment world that he fallen ill. No specific illness was ever revealed. All I would hear was that he was in poor health. The next thing I know, a couple of years later he was dead.
It turns out that what had taken Dung Thanh Lam's life so prematurely was cirrhosis of the liver. I wish I had visited him in the hospital while he was still alive. I know that there was nothing I could have done to help save his life. I really wanted to see him so that I could tell him thank you for all of his accomplishments in his career as a Vietnamese entertainer and how he being Eurasian, an "ethnic minority" in the Vietnamese culture, had really set a good example and had opened a lot of doors for other Eurasians of future generations to come. Dung Thanh Lam was truly a pioneer for Eurasians in the Vietnamese entertainment world. He was the first Eurasian to grace the "cai luong" stage in South Vietnam, the first Eurasian to appear on national television in South Vietnam and the first Eurasian actor to appear in Vietnamese films. For such unprecedented accomplishments and contributions, it is my pleasure to salute, celebrate and honor the memory of Dung Thanh Lam.
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| Mong Tuyen and Phuong Thanh in Mưa Rừng (1991) |
One final note, in the early 1990s the overseas Vietnamese production label, Thuy Nga Paris, had released on video a reprisal performance of the classic
cải lương play, Mưa Rừng, starring Mong Tuyen as the lead female character and both of our late Eurasian fellas, Dung Thanh Lam and Phuong Thanh. For some reason, Mong Tuyen has always looked as if she was Eurasian, to me. I've read biographies on her and from I've read, both of her parents were Vietnamese. But how did she end up with such apparent European features on her face? That's just something I've wondered about every once in a great while. 
